So on February 16, Rutledge decided to drive three hours from Des Moines to Sioux City, Iowa and ask Rick Perry face-to-face about his ties to the company during a town hall meeting at Morningside College.

Rutledge is from Ottumwa, Iowa and the proposed route of a new Dakota Access crude oil pipeline would cut right through the heart of the southeast Iowa county where he grew up, potentially impacting his home community with oil spills, polluted waterways, and damaged farmland.

“Iowans and Americans are tired of not being listened to because we don’t have millions of dollars to influence politicians,” Rutledge told DeSmogBlog. “I heard about ties between Rick Perry, Iowa Governor [Terry] Branstad, and the Bakken oil pipeline and immediately knew this was an opportunity for me to ask him a question about it and bring this issue into light.”

Rick Perry's Iowa spokesman says the potential presidential candidate won't publicly advocate for the controversial Bakken oil pipeline project he has a personal stake in as newly appointed board member of Energy Transfer Partners. But Perry was on TV news telling Iowans they “should support efforts to build the Bakken Pipeline” three days before his appointment to the board of the Fortune 500 oil company was made public.

Prospective presidential candidate Perry gets a direct financial stake in a controversial oil-pipeline proposal. The Bakken pipeline, which would stretch through Iowa on its way from North Dakota to Illinois, is widely opposed by environmental and other groups. But by investing in Perry and his campaign, the company can bank on a friend in the White House to create a climate favorable for such projects. In 2012, the head of Energy Transfer Partners gave a quarter million dollars to a Super PAC for Perry. And now Perry has a seat on its board. A Perry spokesman says Perry won't be publicly promoting the pipeline, but he doesn't have to. His board presence is endorsement enough.

I hope most Americans also understand the absurdity of politicians using their office to return a debt to the deep pockets that helped get them elected.

But Basu's op-ed is also the third mainstream media story in as many days to uncritically repeat a questionable claim that Perry's Iowa spokesman Robert Haus made saying that the Texas politician will not publicly promote the Bakken pipeline in Iowa.

Kevin Anderson, professor of energy and climate change at the Tyndall Centre, discusses why fracking in the UK is incompatible with limiting warming to 2°C.

This piece is a response to Professor Robert Mair’s Royal Society science policy blog, “Hydraulic fracturing for shale gas in the UK – an opportunity to shape a constructive way forward” (In Verba, 26th Jan):

Professor Mair’s Royal Society post suggests that the development of a UK shale gas industry is compatible with the UK’s climate change targets. I suggest this conclusion is premised on a partial and overly simplistic interpretation of the UK’s muddled climate change obligations.

Former Texas governor Rick Perry's recent appointment to the board of Energy Transfer Partners, a company attempting to build a Bakken oil pipeline through Iowa, could hurt him in the first-in-the-nation Republican Party caucus if he decides to run for president, according to a conservative Iowa Republican activist and a DeSmog analysis of the political landscape.

The news about Perry's board appointment and its tie-in to the Iowa Caucus highlights the complicated terrain the issue will create for some Republicans in Iowa. It is a “political hot potato,” as DeSmog's Steve Horn wrote, and it is possible questions about the pipeline will arise in caucus politics leading up to 2016.

Permitting plans in Iowa by Energy Transfer Partners and Dakota Access, LLC have sparked resistance from environmental activists and family farmers, the latter of whom often vote Republican, as well as from the libertarian wing of the GOP. Libertarian Republicans are often concerned about property rights and the potential abuse by government of eminent domain laws to confiscate private land for corporate profit.

“If Rick Perry is going to compete in Iowa this year, this could definitely be a big factor that could hurt him,” Jeff Shipley, a young Republican from Fairfield, Iowa, told DeSmogBlog. Shipley is a Republican activist, organizer, and former statehouse candidate for the Iowa GOP who has worked on presidential campaigns and with county and state party leaders for years. His home in Fairfield is located in Jefferson County, one of 18 Iowa counties sitting along the proposed pipeline route.

This is a guest post by Minda Berbeco cross-posted with permission from Live Science.Minda Berbeco is programs and policy director at the National Center for Science Education and visiting scholar at the UC Berkeley Museum of Paleontology. She contributed this article to Live Science'sExpert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights.

Recently, a college senior reached out to me, looking for tips on how to present her research to the public. We went around in circles for a while, until it became clear that the “public” she was targeting was the legislature in her fossil-fuel-loving state, her research was on climate change and her question was not, “How do I make this accessible?” but rather, “How do I survive?”

I quickly assured her that no one was going to attack her — that, at worst, people might be dismissive of, or uninterested in, her research. I suggested that other concerns might be more pressing: getting good grades, finding a place in a research lab, securing employment after the completion of her graduate work. As for the public, I finished by saying, “My goodness; they can't hurt you, they can't fire you and they can't give you an 'F.'” Afterward, though, I wondered, “Is that really true?”

WSPA apparently spent much of its money on stopping a fracking moratorium bill in the Legislature and trying to undermine California’s law to lower greenhouse gas emissions to 1990 levels by 2020.

Catherine Reheis-Boyd, President of WSPA and the former Chair of the Marine Life Protection Act (MLPA) Initiative Blue Ribbon Task Force to create questionable “marine protected areas” in Southern California, also successfully opposed legislation by Senator Hannah-Beth Jackson to protect the Vandenberg State Marine Reserve and the Tranquillon Ridge from offshore oil drilling plans.

“The winners of the 2014 lobbying competition are in – and the winner is… BIGOIL!’” said Stop Fooling California, an online and social media public education and awareness campaign that highlights oil companies’ efforts to mislead and confuse Californians. “Congratulations, Western States Petroleum Association and Chevron! No one has spent more on evil in California than you!”

The association spent a total of $4,009,178 lobbying state officials in the third quarter of 2014, a new quarterly record by WSPA shows.

"Fossil-fuel companies have spent millions funding anti-global-warming think tanks, purposely creating a climate of doubt around the science. DeSmogBlog is the antidote to that obfuscation." ~ BRYAN WALSH, TIME MAGAZINE